PRINCE FREDERICK WILLIAM, the Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, was probably the most senior officer to die in the Waterloo campaign, and his loss was universally lamented.
The duke was born in Brunswick as the fourth son of Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, and Princess Augusta of Great Britain. He was the cousin and brother-in-law of the Prince Regent, the future George IV. Frederick William joined the Prussian army in 1789 as a captain and participated in a number of battles against Revolutionary France. In 1802 he married Princess Marie Elisabeth of Baden. The couple had three children before Marie died of puerperal fever four days after giving birth to a stillborn daughter. In 1805, after his uncle, Frederick Augustus, Duke of Oels, had died childless, Frederick William inherited the Duchy of Oels, a small principality in Prussia.
In October 1806, Frederick William participated in the joint battles of Jena–Auerstedt as a major general. His father was a field marshal in the same battle, but he was wounded and later died. Frederick William inherited Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, as his eldest brother had died childless only two months earlier, and both his second and third brothers were regarded as mentally unstable. After the defeat of Prussia in this war, his state remained under the control of France and was formally made a part of the short-lived Kingdom of Westphalia. Frederick William fled to the Grand Duchy of Baden, which had remained a sovereign state, where he lived for the next few years.
Date of construction:
1874
Location:
Braunschweig or Brunswick, Germany
When the French war against Austria broke out in 1809, Frederick William used the opportunity to create a corps of partisans to fight the French. This corps was known as the Black Brunswickers because they wore black uniforms in mourning for their occupied country and the death of his father. He financed the corps independently by mortgaging his principality in Oels, but when Austria was rapidly defeated he made his way with his corps from Austrian Bohemia through the states of Saxony and Westphalia to the North Sea coast. He briefly managed to retake control of the city of Brunswick, or Braunschweig, in August 1809, which gained him the status of a local folk hero, but he then fled to England with his small corps to join forces with the British. His troops were taken into British pay and the duke was granted the rank of lieutenant general in the British army on 1 July 1809. The Brunswickers were sent to serve in Spain and Portugal with Wellington and the corps lost heavily in the Peninsular War (see item 28).
Frederick William returned to Brunswick in December 1813, after Prussia had ended French domination. When Napoleon returned from Elba in 1815, Frederick William raised fresh troops to go to war again. On the night of 15 June he attended the Duchess of Richmond’s ball in Brussels and left it, apparently happy to have a chance to show off the fighting ability of his corps.
The Brunswickers were part of the reinforcements sent to help the Dutch division that was holding the crossroads at Quatre Bras on 16 June 1815. The Black Duke, as Frederick William was known, was seen during the fighting reassuring his inexperienced troops by walking up and down in front of them, calmly puffing on his pipe.
Later, as a mass of French infantry advanced up the main road, the duke led a charge by his uhlans (lancers), but they were beaten back. Struck by cannon fire at short range, the Brunswickers broke. At this point, the duke, who was busy reforming his troops, was hit by a musket ball, which passed through his hand and into his liver. He was retrieved by the men, who carried him back using their muskets as a stretcher, but he died shortly afterwards.
The Duke’s final words, to his aide Major von Wachholtz, were: ‘My dear Wachholtz, where is Olfermann?’ Colonel Elias Olfermann was the duke’s adjutant general; he assumed immediate command of the corps on his death.